Join Dave and Jon Ferguson and the NewThing team for a pre-conference event called Discover the Dream on Wednesday, October 8th from 8am to 11:30am. A generous breakfast will be provided, and the experience will be offered at no charge to the first 150 people who register. Spaces are filling up fast, so come join us for this one-of-a-kind event.

At DISCOVER THE DREAM you will...

+ Encounter the dream that God put within you.
+ Understand how your dream is a part of His dream.
+ Hear from leaders who are living out their dream and fulfilling it by planting reproducing churches.
+ Realize how you can be a part of a movement that is pursuing the dream of God.

"God called us to plant a church, but we knew that wasn't the end of our calling. We are called to plant a church that plants churches; we want to reproduce! The Leadership Residency is a chance for us to spend a year catching the heart of a reproducing church while preparing to bring a movement of reproducing churches to Southern California. So we quit our jobs, raised support, packed up the three kids and moved 2000 miles, because that's what you do when God says 'GO'!"

- Matt Larson, NewThing Leadership Resident.

Click here for a special invitation from Dave and Jon Ferguson.

REGISTER

In his article for the upcoming fourth volume of the Catalyst GroupZine, Tim Elmore describes a life-giving mentor as someone who walks beside another and says, "I'm going to help you finish your race well." He says that most mentoring relationships are reduced to either fellowship or facts - dispensing information rather than building up life. He lifts Jesus' leadership as the perfect model for a life-giving mentor: Jesus urged followers to come and see, then come and follow, then come and surrender, then go and multiply.

What do the mentoring relationships in your life look like? Do you follow a program, or do you share life together more informally? What do you suggest for people who are looking to become mentors or who are looking to be mentored?

LifeChurch.tv, ever the innovators, have recently announced a new web service they've created for tracking data in your church. It's ChurchMetrics.com. This free web service has a clean and simple user interface that lets you track and compare and effortlessly analyze graphs for stats such as: attendance, salvations, giving and baptisms.

Introducing ChurchMetrics from ChurchMetrics on Vimeo.

How awesome is that !? LifeChurch.tv is blowing us out of the water with all the amazing things they're doing with technology! And for free! They're really adding value to and serving thousands of churches around the world. LifeChurch, along with more and more other churches, embodies the spirit of "together" in so many ways. It's exciting to see the Church working together more and more!

What can you do to collaborate with or serve a church other than your own?

Last week Scott McClellan told us that "emerging" is no longer a useful term. This week he shared a link about how the emerging church is emerging out of existence. From the Out of Ur blog:

"The emerging church will disappear." That is what my informant told me as we shared drinks at our clandestine watering hole. ... Now comes word from recognized leaders and voices within the emerging church movement that the term has become so polluted that it is being dropped. ... ... As the emerging church rides off into the sunset, where does that leave things? Well, news has been leaking about a new network being formed by Dan Kimball, Erwin McManus, Scot McKnight, and Bob Roberts among others.

Read the whole post.

So this is interesting. The term is already being dropped. I suppose when a term goes-on being undefined or refers to too many opposite things, it's meaningless. I wonder what is this "new network" being formed?

What does "emerging" mean to you?